farm guinea pigs (meat cavy!)

[CertifiedChaser]

Thanks for more information from a professional! But would you be able to cite the article on cuy weighing 6 lbs? I think you're thinking of something else. Cuy is guinea pig. Specific breeds are chosen for meat production but I don't think they are anywhere close to six pounds. I've seen several videos of real preparation of cuy and raising cuy and they just appear to be normal guinea pigs.

 

[Fuzzy Torpedoes]

I know it sounds weird but, definitely not mistaken. The videos you saw would not have been showing their size in a recognizable perspective.

In this case Wikipedia happens to have it. I'm not sure the links I"m pasting here are going to work right, for some reason the scripting on this forum is broken in my browser.

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Guinea pigs are large for rodents, weighing between 700 and 1,200 g (1.5 and 2.6 lb), and measuring between 20 and 25 cm (8 and 10 in) in length.[34] Modern breeding of cuy guinea pigs has resulted in animals weighing 6 pounds (2.7 kg).[35]

--

The sources were:

Vanderlip, Sharon (2003). The Guinea Pig Handbook. Barron's. ISBN 0-7641-2288-6.

Richardson, V.C.G. (2000). Diseases of Domestic Guinea Pigs (2nd ed.). Blackwell. ISBN 0-632-05209-0.

There are some pictures around of cuy comparisons, let me see if I can find some -

Here we go, someone made up a little page, hobbyist who got their hands on one.

http://www.cavyhouse.org/"Cuy"_files/droppedImage.png

picture of monstrous cuy next to a pet breed animal:

http://www.cavyhouse.org/"Cuy"_files/IMG_7280.jpg

page all of that is on:

http://www.cavyhouse.org/"Cuy".html

Here is a good one, a woman holding a cuy, it may as well be a cat or rabbit.

https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/data/attachments/25/25609-6bff50e7743efbc61a99f1f56c24d3fe.jpg

original page here:

https://www.theguineapigforum.co.uk/threads/cuy-showdown.127264/

this

http://mywanderlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/8.-Whole-Guinea-Pig1.jpg

 

[Fuzzy Torpedoes]

There is professional type information for the care requirements of guinea pigs here:
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/Guide-for-the-Care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals.pdf .

It's titled "laboratory animals" but don't let that turn you off. Guinea pigs aren't farmed for food in the UK/US, the main professional use for them is in laboratories, so this is the context where their care requirements appear.

Organization is like:

Page 44 has temperature requirements (68F - 79F btw. Chickens are 61F - 81F for comparison).
Page 45 - 47 talks about ventilation and air quality - it's really important, these things are susceptible to fungal infections and can get upper respiratory infections.
Page 47 - 49 talks about illumination
Page 49 - 50, noise and vibration
Page 50 - 54, housing, environmental enrichment
Page 54 discusses outdoor housing but it does not mean to indicate that the temperature, airflow requirements, etc. are ignored in the case of outdoor housing.
Page 55 discusses space requirements. Page 57 specifies minimum space requirements for guinea pigs but if you do huge cuy, those minimums are out the window. Cuy are way too big for those specifications.
Page 65 is specific husbandry stuff. It discusses food and water through page 68 (critical: do not forget that guinea pigs need vitamin C in their food that other animals do not).
Page 68 starts bedding, then sanitation on page 69, note the footnote on page 71, section ends at page 77.

I recommend this book, "The Biology of the Guinea Pig", a lot of it you can read from Google Books:

https://books.google.fi/books?id=DcTaAgAAQBAJ

A little bit of what's in that book is not necessarily recommended practice now, such as utilizing kale as a "green", but a great deal of the information is valid.

Also worth noting - they are biologically so different from regular livestock that your typical neighborhood veterinarian cannot get things done with them. Guinea pigs require a specific "small animal" specialist veterinarian, and they are not that common. *Require* is the effective word. Some regular vets will decline to service guinea pigs, and for good reason, they know they do not have the right expertise and do not want to be the vet who makes your animal worse or kills it. Some of the differences are, like: most oral antibiotics kill guinea pigs by destroying their gut microbiome. They are sensitive to anesthesia. The strain of ringworm that infects guinea pigs does not show up with the usual inspections that work on cats and dogs (black light and so-on). My understanding is that getting blood from them is quite an affair and the humane way to do it is under anesthesia. There are multiple potential pitfalls for a regular veterinarian who attempts to work with guinea pigs.

So, it's an idea to research the locations of the small-animal specialist veterinarians (find more than one, you never know when one will be on vacation or sick). There's prescription medication they can prescribe to you to solve problems that you can't get anywhere else.

 

[Zoomie]

Thanks for more information from a professional! But would you be able to cite the article on cuy weighing 6 lbs? I think you're thinking of something else. Cuy is guinea pig. Specific breeds are chosen for meat production but I don't think they are anywhere close to six pounds. I've seen several videos of real preparation of cuy and raising cuy and they just appear to be normal guinea pigs.

I was reading up on this last night (thank you so much for the information, @Fuzzy Torpedoes, really appreciate the learning opportunity) and it's true. Here is an article I read last night, with helpful photos: http://www.guineapigtoday.com/2012/06/28/californias-giant-guinea-pigs-cuys-criollos-mejorados/ Pretty astonishing and an amazing achievement in breeding. I can also see why the rescues are having a hard problem: these guys are livestock, not pets, and were not selected for being friendly to humans but for other traits. No wonder people are having a hard time turning them into pets. It would be like taking my neighbor's cattle off the mountain and trying to turn one into a back-yard pet. That would not go well. Same with the cuy, I would think.

 

[Fuzzy Torpedoes]

I was reading up on this last night (thank you so much for the information, @Fuzzy Torpedoes, really appreciate the learning opportunity) and it's true. Here is an article I read last night, with helpful photos: http://www.guineapigtoday.com/2012/06/28/californias-giant-guinea-pigs-cuys-criollos-mejorados/ Pretty astonishing and an amazing achievement in breeding. I can also see why the rescues are having a hard problem: these guys are livestock, not pets, and were not selected for being friendly to humans but for other traits. No wonder people are having a hard time turning them into pets. It would be like taking my neighbor's cattle off the mountain and trying to turn one into a back-yard pet. That would not go well. Same with the cuy, I would think.

Yes, you got it. And the reverse of that, once you understand which animals are which, is like, someone wants to raise field-dwelling hooved animals for meat production, and picks... Shetland ponies. Now if the people didn't know cattle existed, you don't blame them, and the overall concept isn't horrible, but at the same time you are like, no wait there is another way! Not the ponies! Send those to some kids or something and get some cattle. Hehe.

 

[Bug n Flock]

lots of good info

Yes, I agree it is somewhat silly to raise cavy and not cuy, but I have actually been semi actively looking for cuy in my area for well over a decade. If they are here, I have yet to find them. And, shrug, bantam meat is better than no chicken meat at all. Only, with guinea pigs and not chickens if that makes sense lol.

I got an unrelated boar today. Sold a few rats so happened to have cash in my pocket while at a pet shop(danger zone!) and this cute little goopy-eyed crested was being taken to the back room to be "treated"(half of pet shops will tell you this, but the animals go to the back to die. I have worked at enough pet shops to know this firsthand). I bought him. So after some TLC, he will be my second boar. Wh00t wh00t! (In the photo the goopy eye is the one in shadow) No clicking breathing or any other symptoms, so hopefully he will come around quickly under *actual* treatment.

Think I may call the little booger-eyed booger "Flash". He's got super cute markings as well as that super cute crest.

 

[Bug n Flock]

Which, (that super cute crest) the pet shop employees thought was ringworm until I explained that nooo, it was genetics and the piggie just has a rosette on his head.

 

[CertifiedChaser]

Which, (that super cute crest) the pet shop employees thought was ringworm until I explained that nooo, it was genetics and the piggie just has a rosette on his head.

I don't know much about guinea pigs but after reading all of this thread and links provided recently i was thinking maybe he had ringworm but glad he doesn't! Great rescue! Once I get some quail I'm still debating if I should give guinea pigs a shot or not. I don't know if I'll have any luck finding cuy here but I'll give it a shot.

 

[Fuzzy Torpedoes]

Yeah I would not expect cuy to be an easy drive down the road for most of the people in USA. There were some reports of cuy showing up in Petsmarts on the west coast but I'm presuming they aren't attempting that any more because cuy are such poor pets. Plus you need young animals, not older stock like you might find that is left over from that influx a few years ago (if females are not bred when they are young, they have a tendency to die while trying to birth the babies if they get pregnant later - it's not sensible try to start an operation like this with older unbred females as mothers imo).

Perhaps if there is a group of people on here who knows they are interested in doing this, they could do the research and locate an importer or similar source and get a batch of cuy shipped in, and then the people could meet at the receiver's location to pick up their share of the animals. It would not be a tiny expense, naturally, but that's often how it goes when you want special, custom livestock (cuy being rare in USA).

People would of course research the care requirements before wasting their time / effort / money. Cuy may be livestock but they are not European-based livestock like what people in USA will be used to. As you noticed, cuy and pet breed guinea pigs' temperature and housing requirements are different and the animals are not hardy in comparison </understatement>.

It's possible (and reasonable) that after realizing what it takes to keep these things alive in their area, some people are like, never mind. Thinking of the winter care specifically, maybe they decide: Wrong climate, correct housing and temps too big of a pain, too particular on food, too prone to illnesses that kill them, ringworm nothx, don't want 100 guinea pigs in the house because that's the only place available where they could survive, all of the above, whatever.

Someone who changes their mind at this exact time, before the animals get sick due to temperature going too low and similar, has the option of quickly rehoming them to pet homes. In contrast, people would want to have their homework done and ducks in a row (chickens in a row?) if they go to the trouble to get cuy. You can't reasonably rehome those to pet homes. Hand a cuy to a kid and watch it launch out of the kid's arms, maybe knocking the kid down in the process and clawing them, and then you're trying to figure out how to get the freaky thing out from behind the couch.

I hope it does not sound like I am trying to talk people out of breeding guinea pigs/cuy. But it is the fact that if their care requirements aren't met, they can get sick and die rather spectacularly (possibly en masse). There isn't much margin for error with these.

The people who run the guinea pig forums and bury the information about breeding are doing a disservice to people like you and the welfare of the animals. They're helping create the very thing they give so much lip service to hating, which is, breeders who get started but don't have enough information to do it without problems.

With all of these other kinds of animals, there's information on their correct breeding husbandry freely available on the internet (this place for example - chickens). Especially in the context of the internet today, their deliberate omission of the information for guinea pigs (not to mention their vitriolic attitude(s) toward breeders) serves to piss people off and steer them toward getting started anyway.

If animal welfare is the primary concern of those web sites, their realistic option regarding breeding would be to provide the correct and detailed information about it. The way that they are instead running with their (fantasy) agenda about how there are too many guinea pigs in USA/UK and that their numbers must be decreased at all costs doesn't serve that purpose. </soapbox>

 

[Zoomie]

@Fuzzy Torpedoes: yeah... it seems like some people get into breeding ________ then, once they are done, spend the rest of their lives trying to stop other people doing the same thing. It's not really fair or reasonable.

In some cases (such as with animals that are actually wild, like sugar gliders for example) I can see the point... but if it's a domesticated animal, well, lots of other people might like to raise them too. And you are so right, accurate information is what will help, not trying to police others and stop them from doing something they might really want to do.